Undertale! It's set the whole Internet ablaze with commentary and praise, despite it being the work of just one man. It's Cave Story all over again!

With the general intention of getting around to Let's Playing it eventually, I've tried to avoid spoilers about the game. Starting out, I know only a handful of things, mostly gleaned from the trailer:

The game is RPG-style dialog choices, with some sort of actiony "he knows about timed hits!" combat.

It is possible to win without killing anything you fight.

You can date a skeleton.

This is going to be a Blind LP. I might occasionally ask for guidance to make sure I don't miss something important, but please keep spoilers to a minimum. w/e

Music: Once Upon a Time...As always, open in a new window -- Shift-click or wheel-click is a Chrome shortcut that might work in whatever nonChrome browser you're in -- to let the music play while you read.

Ain't that Steam popup obnoxious? The last word is MONSTERS, but I suppose you may have guessed that.

: Ah, do not be afraid, my child. I am TORIEL, caretaker of the RUINS. I pass through this place every day to see if anyone has fallen down. You are the first human to come here in a long time. Come! I will guide you through the catacombs.

Wow, lucky you happened to be making your daily just-in-case-a-human-falls-here trip when I was attacked by that murderous flower.

Toriel leads us through a few doors into some better-lighted corridors.

: Allow me to educate you in the operation of the RUINS. The RUINS are full of puzzles. Ancient fusions between diversions and doorkeys.

Sounds pretty doorkey to me.

: One must solve them to move from room to room. Please adjust yourself to the sight of them.

The next room has Toriel give instructions on switch-flipping. She has helpfully marked all the switches I need to press.

: You will need to be prepared for this situation. However, worry not! The process is simple. When you encounter a monster, you will enter a FIGHT. While you are in a FIGHT, strike up a friendly conversation. Stall for time. I will come to resolve the conflict. Practice talking to the dummy.

This is the full combat screen. Menu options are at the bottom. Fight lets you time a hit to do HP damage. Act lets you do context-sensitive stuff. Item lets you use curative consumables. Mercy gives the options to either flee an enemy or allow it to leave you alone. Haven't seen anything like that since Suikoden!

The first option under the Act menu is always (or nearly always, I haven't found any exceptions yet) "Check", which gives you a short description of the monster you're up against.

It doesn't seem much for conversation. TORIEL seems happy with you.

We get 0 EXP and 0 gold for the tutorial battle. TORIEL gives us some praise and we keep walking, but before long...

Oh dear! An actual battle, with something other than an inanimate object! Whatever shall we d--

Until the room where she makes you walk down an empty corridor by yourself.

: I was merely behind this pillar the whole time. Thank you for trusting me. However, there was an important reason for this exercise. ... to test your independence. I must attend to some business, and you must stay alone for a while. Please remain here. It's dangerous to explore by yourself. I have an idea. I will give you a CELL PHONE. If you have a need for anything, just call. Be good, alright?

I assume it's made of the living sort of cells, and is some sort of squirmy biological organism, because there's no way a radio-powered cellphone is going to get any signal this far underground.

If you try to call Toriel's phone, as she tells you is possible, you get the message "Somewhere, signals deflected by a dog."

I wait another several minutes, but that seems to be the end of it.

: Hello? Hello? This is TORIEL. My apologies. A strange dog kidnapped my phone. So if you called, I could not have helped you. However, I have recovered it. And you are still in that room, are you not? What a good child you are. There are a few puzzles ahead that I have yet to explain. It would be dangerous for you to try to solve them yourself. Be good, alright?

We've already found out that waiting doesn't accomplish anything, so I may as well forge ahead.

The nearby Froggit tells us that using the ACT command in certain ways may make monsters not want to fight us, and if that happens, that we should let it go with the MERCY command.

The nearby save point refills and HP we may have missing, and fills us with determination.

: For no reason in particular... Which do you prefer? Cinnamon or butterscotch?

I tell her cinnamon, because... well, because I prefer cinnamon to butterscotch.

: Oh, I see. Thank you very much!

She calls back two steps later.

: You do not DISLIKE butterscotch, do you? I know what your preference is, but... Would you turn up your nose if you found it on your plate? Right, right, I understand. Thank you for being patient, by the way.

Is Toriel... baking cookies?

It's an RPG with "puzzles", did you think I wasn't ever going to have to push a stone or a crate or anything?

But as the sign implied, the fourth rock is a bit touchy about being shoved around. You have to convince it, gently, to sit on the switch for itself.

Even then, you have to convince it to stay on the switch. Cheeky rock.

The ghost is named Napstablook, and his attack pattern is super hard to avoid.

But he's pretty depressed and can't be bothered to attack all that much. He could use some encouragement! If you are patient and try to lift his, ahem, spirits...

He shows you his "Dapper blook" trick. Applaud it, and he can be let go. He comes to the ruins to be alone, but today he met someone nice! He disappears from his bed of leaves and lets you pass out of appreciation.

Spider bake sale! Made for, by, and of spiders! The next room lets you leave money in the webs. If you do, a spider will crawl out and give you a donut.

Ah, the first bout of updates always seems to take forever, doesn't it? Getting into the game, explaining the core concepts... like this! You can fight more than one monster at a time. It's scary to do that, because...

You have to dodge both attack patterns at once. Moldsmal drops spores that might explode into bursts, while Migosp -- that's the guy on the right -- swarms you with bugs.

A Froggit in the last room tells you that monsters are ready to be Mercied when their names turn yellow. Moldsmal is easy to get rid of, but I can't seem to get Migosp to respond to much of anything.

I end up killing a couple before I make it to the end of the ruins.

This nets me my first EXP of the game. Letting monsters go gives you gold, but not EXP.

In a later room is a buried plant of some sort...

A Vegetoid! He tells you to "eat your greens" when he attacks...

Indicating that the green-colored carrot missiles are good for you, and restore HP instead of taking it away. Vegetoid can be defeated by taking a big bite out of it, which restores even more HP.

So Flowy wasn't just being saccharine, levels in this game really are made of LOVE. Which you get only by killing things. O... kay.

: Oh dear, that took longer than I thought it would. How did you get here, my child? Are you hurt? There, there, I will heal you. I should not have left you alone for so long. It was irresponsible to try to surprise you like this. Err... Well, I suppose I cannot hide it any longer. Come, small one!

: Surprise! It is a butterscotch-cinnamon pie. I thought we might celebrate your arrival. I want you to have a nice time living here. So I will hold off on snail pie for tonight.

Aww, that's super-sweet of ywait what? Living here?

: Here, I have another surprise for you.

Toriel leads us into the next hallway.

Toriel excuses herself, and we're free to explore the little house. The music here is very peaceful and calming, and contributes a lot to the general atmosphere of a safe haven that Toriel is trying to give you. Shame YouTube doesn't seem to have the soundtrack up yet. Music: Home.

Also in the room are a dusty, empty photo frame on the bookshelf and a box of children's shoes of all sorts of sizes. How long has Toriel been doing this?

Toriel's room is all blue. Also featured: her journal of bad jokes ("Why did the skeleton want a friend? Because he was BONELY." and those of similar caliber), her chair (named Chairiel), her sock drawer (described as "scandalous!"), and a cactus (described as "the most tsundere of plants"). The only color in the room is a pot of the yellow flowers from before, only in this shot it's covered by the textbox.

In a nice little detail, you can read about the decorative plants around the house in one of Toriel's books, allowing you to identify them.

That's... weird.

The hallway has an endtable drawer full of flower seeds and broken crayons, and a mirror. The mirror just says "It's you!", since... well, that's all you see.

In the foyer, you can find an old calendar from twenty-exteen. I thought that was what year it was? Maybe the cutscene at the beginning was some other kid that fell down into the ruins and Toriel adopted. (Looking back at the top of the thread, the stripes on the shirt seem different, but the nerdy haircut is the same, so... maybe? Could just be difference in art detail.)

Trapped behind the barrier and fearful of further attacks, we retreated. Far, far into the earth we walked, until we reached the cavern's end. This was our new home, which we named... "Home." As great as our king is, he is pretty lousy at names.

Further details in the kitchen include a chocolate bar in the fridge, white fur stuck in the drain, cookie cutters for gingerbread monsters, and a very clean stovetop. The last leads to some speculation that Toriel uses her fire magic for cooking as well as interrupting Flowey from killing human children.

Trying to explore the basement just gets you gently chided by Toriel, then led upstairs by the hand.

Toriel cuts the pie while you nap, leaving you a slice for when you wake up. Uh, on the floor.

It's a consumable item, but one for "All HP" rather than a set number. I might save this one for later in the game, when I have more HP than the 20 or so I have now.

: Um, I want you to know how glad I am to have someone here. There are so many old books I want to share. I want to show you my favorite bug-hunting spot. I've also prepared a curriculum for your education. This may come as a surprise to you... But I have always wanted to be a teacher. ...actually, perhaps that isn't very surprising. STILL. I am glad to have you living here.

Uhh... yeah, about that.

It's a triumph of game design and writing that I, as the player, actually regretted even asking the question. Toriel tries to change the subject by talking about interesting snail facts, forcing you to persist.